Tracking the Inauguration on Twitter (HOWTO)

So I know there are a lot of ways to do this but I figured I would share the one I came up with last night. For those who aren't familiar with the site "search.twitter.com" it allows you to search everything on Twitter. As a result of this functionality a syntax known as hashtags has come into being. Hashtags are a term preceded by the # symbol and make it easy to search for all conversation on a particular topic such as #inaug09 or #debate, etc. For big events what you often get when following the hashtag is the back channel conversation occurring in real, or at least near, real-time as the event is happening. Yesterday for example I was following #inaug09 during the "We are One" concert in D.C. it was definitely interesting and felt a lot like a big chat room. Another useful search operator for Twitter Search is "near:<Location>" so for example I also had a search running on "near:Washington DC within:10km" to see what people who listed their location as Washington DC were talking about but perhaps not tagging with #inaug09. The real trick here is to find away to monitor this chatter in real-time, at least if you're a twitter/information junkie like me. Of course if the inauguration isn't your thing then I'm sure you can think of plenty of other uses for this search capability.

As I mentioned there are a few ways to do this and I noticed the sites "twitterfall.com" and "monitter.com" getting some traction this morning. I'm guessing that both of these sites use the Twitter Search API and what I've noticed about the search API in the past (particularly on various iPhone clients that use it) is that it doesn't seem to support the "near:" syntax via the API only via the actual search.twitter.com. In addition to this when I was playing with moniter.com this morning I couldn't seem to get it to do a hashtag search when including the #. I don't mean to detract from the development effort that clearly went into these sites, your mileage will most definitely vary and I suggest trying them out. If however you'd like a slightly more geeky solution, read onward.

So here's the solution I came up with:

1. First download the Firefox add-on Greasemonkey which allows userscripting in Firefox.
2. Once Greasemonkey is installed properly and is enabled (there is a little monkey head icon down on the statusbar of Firefox make sure it is not grayed out) download the userscript "Twitter search auto-refresh"
3. Now browse to search.twitter.com and type in a search term since we're just a short time away from the Inaugruation of Barack Obama why not try #inaug09 
4. The search results should automatically refresh when new ones arrive. What you get is in effect a near real-time updating feed of the results as opposed to before where you needed to manually refresh. Why Twitter doesn't make this the default behavior is beyond me.
5. Now you could stop here but what if you want to see more than one feed side-by-side?
6. My solution to this was another Firefox add-on I discovered via a Google search known as "Split Browser" which allows you to create as many vertical or horizontal panes within a browser window as you like. I ended up creating a pane for the #inaug09 search and then loading the "near:Washington DC" search in the main browser window.
7. What you'll end up with is something like the screenshot below. Enjoy!
8. One last thing you can use Tweetie (and other clients) for the iPhone to track searches when you're on the go. I highly recommend Tweetie it's the best Twitter client for the iPhone, in my opinion.